What makes apples grainy

Mealy apples sound much denser than fresh apples, but this is hardly an accurate method of detection! They are perfectly safe for us to continue consuming for a long time after they start to dry out and soften up. However, mealy apples eventually turn moldy, and this is when they become dangerous. If the apple has a bad or unusual smell to it, throw it away or better yet, put it in the compost. If you see visible mold or bacterial growth, then it should have gone a long time ago.

Grab an apple peeler like this and get ready to start cooking; those mealy apples have a lot of life left in them! Mealy apples are perfect for baking and cooking. Mash the apples up for a delicious apple cake, or use the mealy apples for added sweetness when preparing muffins or pancakes. Alternatively, you can simply fry or bake them for a quick and tasty snack. Our favorite dish to make with mealy apples is applesauce.

It's super easy, as all you have to do is stew the apples with a little bit of cinnamon, sugar, and apple cider vinegar.

The slow cooking process totally breaks the apple down, giving you a sweet and delicious sauce that pairs particularly well with pork chops! Apple butter is a yummy concentrated form of apple sauce that pairs particularly well on top of warm biscuits. You stew the apples for much longer, reducing the liquid until you have a paste or butter.

Use apple butter in baking and cooking or cook it up with water to turn it into apple sauce. You can turn your mealy apples into juice, too. Rather than making sweet apple juice, though, why not turn the apples into a healthy green juice? Add some leafy green vegetables, like kale and spinach, then juice everything in the juicer!

Hello, healthy and satisfying juice! How apples are kept crisp and crunchy up to a year after being picked.

Few food experiences are as satisfying as that crisp, juicy crunch when you sink your teeth into the flesh of a particularly good apple. Getting that fresh fix doesn't have to be a seasonal thing anymore, thanks to some nifty chemistry that can put an apple in suspended animation after it's picked from the tree.

Apple storage is by no means new. People have been storing fresh apples as long as they've been growing them, often in cool, dark cellars. These days though, to maintain as much of an apple's crunch, flavour and nutrition between harvests, fruit storage has gone high-tech. The trigger for ripening is the plant hormone ethylene, Hannah James, research and development manager at AgroFresh, a company that specialises in fruit freshness and quality technologies, said.

Apple cells produce ethylene and contain ethylene receptors — and not just cells in the skin, but those inside too. When an ethylene molecule latches onto an ethylene receptor, it kicks off a cascade of reactions inside the cell to ripen the fruit. With enough time and ethylene exposure, an apple will start to show the distinct signs of over-ripening. For instance, Dr James said, cell walls — which usually impart a nice crispness — start to soften.

Ethylene from an apple can start the ripening process in other fruits and vegetables — and even cut flowers. So don't keep a vase of flowers by your fruit bowl: ethylene emitted by the fruit will cause the petals to drop off. The first is cold storage or refrigeration, which is precisely what it sounds like: placing the fruit in a cold storeroom.

But growers can also control the gases that make up a storeroom's atmosphere to slow ripening. This is called atmosphere control. In essence, it dials oxygen way down and carbon dioxide up. Like us, apples need oxygen to carry out their metabolic functions, including ripening. Less oxygen means all those processes taper off, regardless of the amount of ethylene present. So some growers use what's known as dynamic atmosphere control.

Oxygen levels are lowered until the fruit shows the first signs of stress. If an apple is getting stressed because it's not getting enough oxygen, its green pigment called chlorophyll absorbs and re-emits light in a different way to when the apple is healthy. There's another way to stop ethylene from doing its job, and that's to prevent it from latching onto ethylene receptors.

There are plenty of delicious ways to use them up. I cut the apples into wedges, cooked them up in a pan in some butter and then added some cornstarch dissolved into water, cinnamon and brown sugar to the apples shortly before they were cooked through.

They're also wonderful on top of oatmeal or as a topping for pancakes, waffles, French toast or crepes. Here are several other ways to use up mealy apples so you aren't throwing away perfectly edible food. Apple sauce: Some recipes use the slow cooker for an easy applesauce.

How easy? You don't even need to peel or core the apples before tossing them in. Carrot Apple Ginger Soup : This vegan soup cooks all the ingredients together with some vegetable broth and then purees them to a smooth, creamy soup that's beautiful and nutritious.

This fun spin on a savory main dish will make good use of apples that are past their prime. All photos: Jaymi Heimbuch. This recipe turns apples into a dinner dish by stuffing them with bread, nuts, carrots, celery, onion and more. The relish lasts for two weeks in the refrigerator, so you can try it on several dishes. Vibrant, delicious and good for you! Photos: Kimi Harris. Green juice : Apples can add a little sweetness to a healthy juice that also has vegetables like spinach or kale in it.

Apple Chips: Apple chips are apple slices that have had all the water removed from them.